Ever have that floppy feeling? You wake up one morning, and wow, where'd that come from? You drive to work knowing that, the performance just wasn't the same as before. Well, what are you going to do? Thanks for asking, here's a tutorial on how to fix that door mirror that 'failed' you!!

The brain-trust in Stuttgart, spent all of twelve minutes on the design of our door mirrors. Not sure what they were thinking, using a steel spring-loaded bolt to attach the mirror base to mirror. The middle section of the door mirror is the culprit, it has aluminum threads. Over the years, as you hit the mirror, or fold them in for a car wash, the stress on those aluminum threads takes it's toll.

My car, an '89 944 turbo, suffered mirror failure the other day. Grrrrrr, with only 65,000 miles on the clock, how did this happen? Well, after I got over that shock, decided to dig into the problem. Craigslist or any of the 924/944 forums, and car-part.com are the typical sources for an exact mirror replacement. That is the preferred method, just get another one, and get 'er done. But, I didn't find one, and decided on a different path.

When doing this, one has to take note on the differences between early and late cars. Speaking of 944's of course, 924's probably used the same one through out the production run. I think this is the part number for that run.
477 857 521 E. The later model mirror, driver side speaking, is the same, but ends with a 'D'. Pretty much the same mirror, however, not quite the same. Take your mirrors apart following the instructions at clark's garage. Be very careful on the early cars, removing the mirror. The three pins are going to pretty crusty, easy to crack the glass.

The pins in the plug are different, more of them, and the overall fit is different. So, in my case, I didn't find a direct replacement at the time of frustration, so decided to cobble parts from my 1980 sorta guards red CGT clone, and the one that broke on the 951. I was going to use the 924 base and swivel thingy, and mate them to the mirror of the 951. After dutifully painting the 924 parts, found out on install, that nothing matched quite right.

So, decided to use the 944T base, and the rest from the 924 turbo. Worked great, unscrewing the devil bolt to separate the base and the mid-section only required the appropriately sized 12 point tool. It's not under tension with that spring in there. Here are some piccies for ya. The reason to fix, is right here:

First, you need some tools, I didn't have any guards red paint, but this apple red is quite close.
Then, you need a tool terminal extractor for the plug. This one is from NAPA, worked great. I taped the plug to mark the wires so you can remember where they went.
Here is the 924 piece.
Here I have the 924 and 944 pieces on my 'paint' booth. You have to decide if you want to mix and match early and late model parts. Best bet is to find the appropriate year part to match your part. Lot less work.
So, in this pic, you have the 944 base, it's bigger than the 924, and the rest is 924 parts. The electrical innards and mirror are the original 944 parts as well.
Here's the finished product, looking good. I'll source a complete late 944 setup some day, and get rid of this. But, in the mean-time, pretty cheap fix.
Gratuitous shot of the dusty 951.
_________________'83 944 Track car.
'88 924S Track car.
'89 944 Turbo
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